1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of medical diagnostic systems. In particular, the present invention relates to a digital medical diagnostic system designed to allow ophthalmologists to efficiently diagnose patients based on ophthalmic examinations.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Many digital medical diagnostic and imaging systems exist in modern ophthalmology facilities. Such systems provide invaluable tools for identifying, diagnosing and treating ophthalmic diseases. Often, final diagnosis and treatment proceed only after the ophthalmologist has reviewed examinations with detailed images of relevant patient areas and tissues via one or more imaging modalities.
Currently, there are quite a few digital modalities that can be used for ophthalmic diagnosis. These modalities include, but are not limited to, the following: Fundus Cameras for angiography, color photos and red free photos; Ultrasound; Optical Coherence Tomography; Slit-lamp photography; Corneal Topography; and Scanning Laser Ophthalmosocope. These modalities complement one another and offer the ophthalmologist a range of techniques for imaging particular diseases. Further, these modalities are stand-alone systems, or have just a limited ability to provide local networking functions.
The conventional ophthalmology modality environment is illustrated in FIG. 1. The typical ophthalmic facility contains a modality 10 optionally connected to a viewing station 20, via a private network 30. The modality includes image acquisition hardware 11 that is connected to an image-processing capture station or computer system 12. This computer system includes a monitor 13 to directly display the acquired images and a storage subsystem 14 to store a limited number of studies. A study generally refers to a group of images taken at the same time on the same patient. Typically, computer system 12 further includes a mechanism or archive 15 for archiving studies. Studies are archived to free up the limited storage space, to file studies with the physical patient record, and to provide a backup mechanism for retrieving studies in case of a disaster. Current archiving mediums include paper printout, CD, DVD, and tape. Most of the advanced modalities further include a network connection 16. The network connection is used to display studies on a viewing station 20 via private network 30.
Viewing station 20 includes a computer system 22 with a monitor 21 to display the studies, proprietary viewing software 23 and a network connection 24 to communicate with modality 10 via private network 30. Current ophthalmic modalities providing access to studies from viewing stations 20 are based on a client-server architecture that requires modality specific proprietary viewing software 23 on the viewing station. This proprietary software works on private local area network 30, but is inoperable for public or wide area networks which characteristically have low bandwidth and slow response times (large delays). The proprietary software also does not support access to studies by many viewers at the same time.
Ophthalmologists using these modalities need to be near the modalities' physical location and need to use the modalities' proprietary software to perform a diagnosis of the captured examinations. The current scenario has several drawbacks: (1) the ophthalmologist needs to be physically close to the modality; (2) the ophthalmologist needs to install the proprietary software at each location examinations are accessed; (3) the ophthalmologist needs to learn each modality's proprietary software; (4) the ophthalmologist cannot easily compare data from different modalities; and (5) the ophthalmologist must deal with proprietary user interfaces that do not optimize the way ophthalmologists view and diagnose examinations.